


But We Went Right on with the Show (Seen the Lights Go Out)

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, POV Natasha Romanov, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Relationship, grim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 21:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: It was Natasha who spotted them first.





	But We Went Right on with the Show (Seen the Lights Go Out)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vextant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant/gifts).



> For the BuckyNat Secret Santa 2017 fanworks exchange. My prompt was "nuclear apocalypse."
> 
> I had the song [Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go out on Broadway)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBPbOjA_cWg) by Billy Joel playing in my head the entire time I was writing this fic, and there's where the title's from.

It was Natasha who spotted them first.

The night was dark, and without the regular lights of the city, it was hard to tell, but in the crowd she thought she spotted a long, thin flash of something that reminded her of Clint’s bow. She would have written it off, but a few seconds later, there was a glint of a reflection next to it, and a man with shoulder-length brown hair...

“Look,” she said to Sam, grabbing his arm and pointing. “Is that...?” She didn’t finish the sentence, not wanting to jinx it.

He looked, and took off in their direction, with her a split second behind, the two of them pushing through the throng. Discretion, hiding, making themselves invisible... none of that mattered anymore, not in all this chaos.

Clint turned and caught her eye. “Nat!”

She reached them and he wrapped her up in a tight hug. Natasha squeezed him back, giddy with relief. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” she said, her arms wrapped around his neck firmly. She’d been so worried, ever since the power grid, not to mention all internet and telephone systems, had gone dark. And that was _before_ the fires had started.

She pulled back, and Sam cut in for his own hug with Clint, which gave her a chance to take a look at Barnes. He nodded at her and she nodded back, the two of them standing across from each other kind of awkwardly. The last time she’d seen him was at Leipzig/Halle, when she’d watched him and Steve escape. Since then, she’d been out of the loop with everyone except for Clint. All of the pardons, even the repeal of the Accords hadn’t done much to repair Tony’s trust in her, and she hadn’t quite been ready to crawl back to Steve, so she’d gotten the news of Barnes’s successful treatment in Wakanda and subsequent return to the U.S. through the Bartons.

There was no news of Steve since this whole thing started, though, which left her kicking herself daily for the ugly pride that had kept her away. One of her closest friends in the world, she had no idea whether or not he was alive, and the last interaction she’d had with him was not a positive one, to say the least.

“So how did you find each other?” Sam asked.

“The bow attracts attention,” Clint said with a sheepish smile. “Some of my trick arrows have come in handy over the past few days. Got a lot of use out of the flare ones. What have you been up to?”

Natasha gave him a brief summary. She’d found Sam on the second day of the chaos—he had already started some sort of organization giving out blankets, clean drinking water, and cans of food to people in need. He’d set up a kind of relief shelter out of a former community center, soliciting donations and organizing volunteers. Word had spread quickly, and even though she was busy trying to focus on getting to the bottom of how it had all happened, who had attacked them and why, she couldn’t resist checking to make sure it was really him. Of course, once she’d revealed herself to him, he’d roped her into helping out, and that had put an end to her original plans.

“Have you guys seen any of the others?” Sam asked.

Clint shook his head. “No, not a hint of them. But if _we’re_ alive, then the Super Soldier and the guys with the exoskeletons and the woman who can move things with her mind...” He trailed off, looking lost for a moment, then shook it off and looked back at him. “That’s what I have to believe, anyway.”

“Have _you_ been safe?” Natasha asked Clint quietly, not knowing the protocol for mentioning his family around the other two. He’d introduced the original Avengers team to Laura and the kids, but maybe he’d thought better of it after the events surrounding the Accords, the way they’d all turned on each other so easily.

He caught her eye and nodded. “I was in a safe place when I heard the news, and...I had to come and see if I could help.”

She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him, leaving the cocoon of his farmhouse, the family who loved him, all to jump headfirst into a situation like this. It was different for her. Everyone she cared about was on the job—there was no one for her to miss at home, no one missing _her_. It was just...so different.

 

====

 

They brought them back to the shelter, and Sam started showing them around. They had a few different stations set up: a classroom converted into a cafeteria, a makeshift medical clinic in what had used to be an art studio, a basketball court set up with mattresses and blankets. A few of the regular volunteers, Fernando and Susan and Alon, were busy treating locals with dehydration or infection, and handing out broth and canned beans to the visitors.

“We also have others working with us, who come and go between a few different places,” Sam explained. “A few doctors, a social worker, and people who want to help, but just can’t stay in one place for too long, or they’re on their way out of the city, looking for a new life. Natasha is great at warding off raiders, and I do most of the scavenging...just gotta keep as many people as possible alive until we rebuild.”

It was a pretty good setup, as far as these things went. Natasha knew she was just a cog in the machine, that she couldn’t take credit for any of the lives the shelter had saved, but looking at it with an outsider's point of view, she was impressed at how much they’d accomplished in such a short amount of time.

“Rebuild,” Barnes said, and she realized that this was the first thing she’d heard from him. His voice sounded strangely normal compared to the last time she’d heard him speak, in Germany. “How do we do that?”

“That’s one of those things we need to figure out,” she said. “The shelter is important, but I think we need to get to the outside world in order to figure out—”

“How this all happened,” he finished.

“Right.”

“Stay here tonight,” Sam offered. “It’s not much, but we have mattresses and blankets, and it’s late. In the morning, we’ll work on a plan.”

 

====

 

Clint threw himself into volunteering with enthusiasm; Barnes was just as quick to help, but more awkward about it. He was distracted, at first; she could see him looking around at all of the people sitting down and eating. She wondered what he was thinking. If, like her, he sometimes wished he was one of those ordinary people who let others take care of them. It felt sometimes that the survival skills that kept her alive were more of a millstone around her neck than anything else, instincts that kept her from ever feeling truly relaxed, from ever entirely belonging anywhere.

After a while, though, she could see him relaxing, becoming more personable with the visitors, joking about the taste of the food and the quality of the accomodations.

“You won’t get anything like this at the Ritz-Carlton, even in its prime, I can tell you that,” he said to an elementary-school-aged girl with smudged glasses, as he opened a can of white beans and tossed the top of the can into a dedicated can for metal waste.

“What’s the Ritz-Carlton?” the girl asked.

“Oh, it’s some schmancy hotel down the block, but nobody goes there anymore.” Bucky ladled some broth into her bowl and held out a handful of crackers. “Not since we drove them out of business.” He caught Natasha staring, and winked.

So this was the Bucky Barnes that Steve remembered. It was amazing, the stark difference between this and the killing machine she’d encountered in Odessa. Even the sullen, captured soldier in Berlin had almost nothing in common with this man.

Once everyone had eaten, they’d directed people towards the gym for the night. The sleeping plan, so many people together in one room, wasn’t ideal by any means, but they had volunteers patrolling all night to prevent abuse, and a strict no tolerance policy, which went above and beyond kicking abusers out of the shelter. Natasha had been forced to break three fingers on her first night there, and another two the second night, but since then, there had been no incidents.

Leaving Alon in charge, they showed Clint and Bucky to the former office where they kept the supplies, where she and Sam usually switched off sleeping. The mattresses here were thinner than the ones in the gym, but the blankets were warm, made out of faux fur that did a good job of keeping the cold out of their bones.

The desk was pushed up against the wall, and Sam pulled it out just enough to get the top drawer open, so that he could get at his Falcon pack. He pressed a button, ejecting the goggles, and started putting on the suit.

“You’re going out,” Bucky said.

“Supplies ain’t gonna find themselves,” he responded, continuing to assemble his uniform. “So many people abandoned the city right when it first hit, leaving behind food, bedding, bottled water...all this useful stuff that I can’t justify leaving untouched when there are so many people in need, and we have no idea if anyone will ever be coming back for them.”

“Hey, no one’s judging you for saving lives,” Clint said, holding up his hands defensively.

“It’s nice that you think so. Plenty of people see a Black man taking a full backpack out of an abandoned building, they jump to assumptions. But what can I do? I’m the one with the wings.”

 

====

 

Natasha took the first watch, walking around the building to make sure everything was peaceful, and taking a few trips outside and seeing that no trouble was brewing there. Raiders could be a problem, especially when they were armed, although she’d dealt out enough damage to hopefully ensure that they’d be left alone. She didn’t think they would gang up in larger packs to try and take them out—unlikely that so many people with such petty interests would set their differences aside to work together for such a low payout.

Three hours later, she returned to the office and shook Clint awake for his turn. He’d left the mattress warm, and she tried not to think about how far her standards had fallen that she was grateful to sleep in the echo of someone else’s body warmth.

It took a few minutes for her to realize that, based on the breathing patterns coming from the mattress next to her, she wasn’t the only one in the room awake. She sat up on her elbow to check, and sure enough, Bucky had his arms crossed behind his head as he looked up at the ceiling. “Shit, did I wake you?” Sleep was a precious commodity—especially with conditions like these, that made it so hard to fall into a deep sleep—and waking a sleeping person in this shelter was considered just as bad as stealing food from each other. 

He looked over at her. “Don’t worry about it. I’m a light sleeper. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something else waking me up.”

“It must be weird for you. We’re all practically strangers.”

“It’s not so bad. Steve told me all about you, so, not exactly strangers.”

“Steve told you about me personally? Or all of us?”

He laughed, a low chuckle that made her give him another glance. “He told me you made fun of his kissing technique.”

“Oh my God, I did _not_.” That asshole, always taking that comment out of context and giving her shit for it. The thought had just popped into her head when she asked if it had been his first kiss since coming out of the ice—she hadn’t meant it as a criticism.

God, she hoped he was still alive.

“He said you were one of his best friends and that he would trust you with anything, and so should I.”

She tried very hard to hold back a snort. “No, he didn’t.”

“I swear it.”

Natasha shook her head, marveling at the—was it naivety or just goodness? When she’d first met Steve, she’d assumed that he was a stick-in-the-mud prig who would judge her for her ease in the shadows, for how comfortable she was getting her hands dirty. And maybe she’d been right—maybe when she’d first met him, he had been that man, but after going through everything that they had together, both of them had been profoundly changed for the better. “Well, I know better than to question Steve’s judgment a second time, so I won’t argue.” 

He sighed, and so did she, and they lay in silence for a few minutes, the dark making everything more intense and intimate. Then he rolled to his side and said, “You know, when we fought in the airport... something about you seemed very familiar.”

“The Winter Soldier shot me once.” Not _You shot me_ ; she knew what it was like to be molded into a weapon, and the struggle of separating the persona that had been forced upon her from her own new self-identity, forged out of choices she’d made of her own free will.

“I remember that.” He paused, and she hoped he wasn’t about to apologize for something he’d had no control over. “But no, that’s not what I was thinking of; it was watching you fight. It seemed like I knew you somehow.”

“Well, my fighting style’s not exactly unique. I was raised in the Red Room, if you’ve—” but by the way he sucked in a breath, there was no need to finish the sentence; he was obviously familiar with them.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, at least I got out. I’m here now.” With a start, she looked at her surroundings, the unheated storage room with the cracked, boarded-up window, and let out a cynical laughed. “I mean, it _is_ better. In a way.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Half a smile in his shadowed face. Better to be free in hell than to be kept on a leash to murder on command and then given a warm meal afterwards.

“So, you know about the Red Room?”

“I was paired up with others like you for a few missions here and there. HYDRA and the Red Room had joint interests, I guess. I don’t know when, what year—years—I don't even know if it was before or after your time. Maybe both.” He looked over her face, a warm smile starting to curl up one side of his mouth. “Would have remembered you, though.”

He was really a very attractive man. “Aw, Barnes, you’re flirting.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Maybe.”

It was hard to tell whether he was just trying to infuse some levity into a tense situation or if he meant more by it, but it felt good, and when their second silence lasted longer than a few minutes, she fell asleep with a smile on her face.

 

====

 

Natasha didn’t wake up at the next changing of the guards, and the next thing she knew, the gray light of post-apocalyptic dawn was shining in through the office window. Sam was back, squeezed between her and Clint, who was muttering something in his sleep, and the building was quiet.

She got up quietly, rinsed her mouth with the water bottle next to the mattress, and slipped out of the room to go find Bucky. He was standing by the reception desk, and when she walked up, he reached out his metal hand, and she took it, sliding her fingers between his like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“We need Wakanda’s help,” he said, as she leaned her head against his metal shoulder.

“That’s what I keep saying.” Sam had insisted that they could do more on the ground, but she knew there was something outside, somewhere where the world still existed, and that was the only way they’d be able to fix this.

She stood up, gathering the cleaned pot from the night before, along with a bag of rice and some water and powdered milk, then started their camping stove and started to prepare breakfast. By the time Sam and Clint came out, the “porridge” was ready, and they re-started the discussion over the meal.

“We need to keep looking for the rest of the team,” Clint insisted. “Word travels more slowly when you have no internet or telephones, but they’ve got to be around here somewhere.”

“We can’t assume that.” Natasha pointed her spoon at him. “I want them to be okay just as much as you do, but we can’t just wait for them to swoop in and save the day. We need Wakanda, we need King T’Challa.”

“I’m not abandoning this place,” said Sam. “I can’t just leave all these people.”

“Well.” Bucky took another spoonful, then put down his empty bowl. “There are four of us. We can split up. If we got to Washington, the embassy...”

“Who says Washington is in any better shape?” Clint said. “We haven’t seen any helicopters, any quinjets, helicarriers...I mean, the _scope_ of this thing!” His arms flew out, open, as if he was trying to get a handle on exactly how much destruction had hit the region.

“Still,” Natasha said, standing up and collecting the bowls, “if we can reach the Wakandan ambassador, maybe we can get help.”

Sam stood up as well, getting their dishwashing pot with the reused water and the tongs, and putting the pot on the fire to boil. Once it was set up, he turned back to them. “How would we get to Washington? The roads are shot. There are no buses, no cars, no trains. My wings certainly won’t take me that far.”

“I’ve still got my motorcycle.”

They all looked at Bucky.

“I know none of you have much of a reason to trust me, but—”

“Cap trusts you,” Clint interrupted. “And I trust him.”

Sam looked less convinced. “Maybe if you take Nat with you.”

Natasha coughed loudly into her palm. Not that she hated the idea, but....

“I mean, Natasha, would you please accompany Barnes to Washington so you can try to contact Wakanda together?” Sam said, trying again.

She met Bucky’s eyes, and he gave her a look that made her go warm from her toes all the way up. There was no way everyone hadn’t noticed that bit of chemistry, so she made sure to inject an ironically nonchalant tone into her voice as she answered. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Clint laughed.

 

====

 

They found the bike right where he’d hidden it, with a full tank.

“Okay, then,” Natasha said. She set her hand on the seat, gliding her palm along the smooth leather. “What do you think we’ll find in Washington?”

“I don’t know.” He waited for her to move her hand, then climbed onto the bike and patted the seat behind him for her to hop on, and she did, gripping his legs with her thighs and sliding her arms provocatively around his hips to hold him around the middle. He looked back at her, squinting with raised eyebrows and a reckless grin. “Let’s go and find out.”


End file.
